


ground zero

by MiniInfinity



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, Cross-Posted on AFF, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2018-12-18 13:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11875353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniInfinity/pseuds/MiniInfinity
Summary: After moving away from the city, Jongin meets someone who only asks for him to read his favorite book.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> some other warnings: mention of self harm, disturbing images ?? [dw, I'll mention these in the chapter they're on, before the chapter actually starts], and no beta :c

Sunset runs behind the mountains, oranges nearly catching up to the blues above. Light winds drift in between clouds. The air is a little flirt with his shirt, the hems lifting up a couple of inches before settling back down across his skin. Branches and tall grasses bristle against the wind in dark greens and even darker browns. Foliage separates by a clean pathway of earth leading downhill. He inhales dirt-ridden oxygen into his lungs, nature getting accustomed to his mind and to the bottoms of his beat-up sneakers, as he follows the trail.

The trail ends at a shore of a lake, blue waters refracting oranges and pinks of the horizon. He plucks his shoes off, leaving them on a boulder, and rolls his jeans up. Dirt sloshes between his toes with every step he takes closer to the boundary of land and water. He steps into the lake slowly, cool waters gushing across his calves and toes. He squeals into his palms, cracks a smile from nostalgia, because nature like this can’t survive between high-rise luxury, cafe rushes, and traffic breezes.

He bounces on his toes a little and remembers playing at a stream with his parents and two sisters, throwing water at each other before offering to wash their backs with stream water. He remembers a frog jumping on his leg and his screaming as the rest of his family fall into a consonance of laughter, not even bothering to get rid of the damn amphibian. He hated it back then, the embarrassment and not being able to laugh at it because _Mommy, this frog might be poisonous_ , but now he misses the unpolluted air rushing into his nose, the walks to and from the stream, even the frog sticky on his skin.

He jumps when a voice pops up behind him, shooting his reminiscence disarrayed and dead. “I guess you’re a city dweller?”

He turns and takes in a man in an old shirt, minuscule holes gaping sporadically on the cloth, and basketball shorts. There’s a book in his hand and Jongin holds back from asking what book the man is reading.

“Oh, yeah. I moved into a little house up there,” Jongin points to the right of the mountain; at least, that’s where he thinks his new house is. The possibility of forgetting where his new house is located forces a sigh out of his lips. “I think.”

The man nods and sits down at the base of a tree close to the brink of the lake. “Welcome, then.” There's an awkward overlap of silence before the man pulls a corner of his lip up under a "Cold today, huh?" and Jongin picks up a scent of ripped grass and maybe even a tangent of gasoline puffing into the sky from long drives.

"Yeah, colder than where I came from," through Jongin's fingertips chiding into a slow tune against the cloth of his shorts, right before the lake meets his digits. The man punctuates Jongin's taps with low hums, random melodies but enough for Jongin to follow along.

Bands of the man's dark hair sift to the side over his pale forehead, allowing soft hums to combust to an even softer sigh. "I’ll just read here."

There's a breathy snort that lingers Jongin's lips, over whispered wonderings and muttering waves whipped deeper, further into the lake. Maybe technology dies out in nature.

Jongin walks out of the lake and sits besides the man. Their crossed knees almost brush when the man splays the book on his lap. “What are you reading?”

The man doesn’t spare a glimpse up at Jongin, not even for manners. “It’s my favorite book.”

“What’s it called?”

The man shakes his head before proffering the book to Jongin. When Jongin looks at the man with apprehension, the man nods at the book, “Go ahead, look at it.”

The black leather slides smoothly on Jongin’s palms as he flips through the book back and forth from the front to the back cover. He lays the book flat on his palm before he turns to a blank page and the next page, every word on the next page completely handwritten. A graceful penmanship in a bleeding red ink. He turns to the next page and the one after that. “This entire book is handwritten.”

“Yeah, crazy, right?” Jongin nods as he flips through the book. His eyes string the words but never read them. “I found it when I moved here. No title, no author, but it became my favorite book.”

He pictures an old woman sitting at a wooden desk, writing on the book with veins prominent on the wrinkled skin of her hands. Aged in experience, an elegant flick of her wrist mapping a narrowing swish of a character with a fountain pen. Perhaps there’s a window offering leftover daylight from amidst the trees and mountain slopes and onto her desk. “Maybe it’s from quite a long time ago, from someone who lived in your house before you moved in?”

“Maybe,” there’s a pause only filled with the crisp pages of the book that Jongin leafs through. “Hey, you should read it.”

Jongin looks up for the first time in a while and the man’s smile greets him warmly. “Um, usually, someone doesn’t want to give their copy of their favorite book to a stranger.”

“It’s okay, I’ve memorized the book word by word. And my name is Kyungsoo.”

Jongin shakes Kyungsoo’s hand, cold but soft against his own, “I’m Jongin.”

  
The trail finishes off halfway to his home but familiar plants guide him back up to his compact house perched between trees, higher up in the mountains than the lake or the trail. A walkway dotted with gray stone-steps directs him to the front  door. The keys from his pocket dangle and chime in one hand, Kyungsoo’s book in another.

Warm light filters from ceiling lamps and illuminates the living room. A three-seater leather couch in front of a small TV propped into the wall, really. A coffee table intrudes the pathway between the couch to the television and an empty bookshelf against the wall watches from the side of the couch.

He falls back on his bed after a quick shower, Kyungsoo’s book in hand, and throws the blanket across his body.

He flips past the note in the first three pages and goes straight to the first marked page.

_The woman sits down at her chair besides the window, journal on her lap. She grips onto the pen tight even as her fist trembles from the pressure until she starts writing._

Remember when we first moved in?

It was pouring in the woods, a typical August storm at precisely the 17th in 1990, but the city had a soft gray from the clouds. I thought it would be nice to wear the blue dress but it got muddy at the skirt even after you tried to carry me to our new, little house.

_She looks up at the back corner of the living room, an empty bookshelf gaping back at her._

Remember how it was empty except for the bookshelves?

Around a quarter of the boxes were for your books. I thought you were crazy for bringing so many but now I miss all of the books, especially the ones I haven’t read because the more unread books there were, the more I realize how short the time we were together felt.

Even though it was raining, you suggested to explore the woods and run through the lake. “Rain smells so nice between the trees. Imagine inhaling and not smelling gas or fast food.”

I told you no, “We’ll get sick, maybe pneumonia,” and it would be bad since we just moved in.

We spent the night with vanilla-scented candles scattered onto tables and chairs, waiting for the following day’s sunlight to guide us, and you read to me. We slept on the floor with thick covers because the bed was still disassembled in its box. I blew on the candles, whispered goodnight, but I knew you were awake.

You stared at the ceiling and a gleam of unreal, unhidden disbelief stayed in your eyes until I closed mine. The last thing I remembered you said before I fell asleep. It was hard not to think of those words for the rest of my life.

“We made it.”

_She closes the book and sighs._

Jongin wonders if the writer lived this story in the same exact spot, if Kyungsoo has ever remapped the places of the story to perceive the events in the same exact places where the writer experienced them.


	2. Chapter 2

Jongin doesn’t see Kyungsoo the next day. Something about meeting up with relatives “for a few days, maybe four,” and how they don’t like the mosquitos stalking for flesh to poke into. But Jongin zoned halfway because at least Kyungsoo’s family members genuinely want to see him.

So Jongin grabs the book from the nightstand with a mug of coffee, steam tendrils rolling above the rim, and kicks the legs of a forlorn chair on the way to the window in his bedroom. Sleep isn’t friendly at five in the morning.

_Forgotten Season is seldom a tune I associate with happiness nowadays, but the sad song used to be the one I smiled to when you sing it. Mothers, grandmothers in the marketplace asked you to sing the song for them. Every time you did, I hope they haven’t went through the emotions and events of the song and I hope they never will. The melody of the ambiguous future, if the last words are really the last words, a definite, unsaid goodbye._

_Ironic how I ended up worrying people over something without worrying myself about it._

  
Eight AM welcomes Jongin’s umbrella to drizzles of precipitation and clouds crawling around the mountain. He slips into his car after cursing at the umbrella to finally close and drives through the woods. He still needs a navigator to do grocery shopping, with everything still so new to him, so he calls Sehun to give him directions so he doesn’t use up this evil thing called data.

“The closest grocery store is like next to a marketplace.”

“How far is it?”

“Thirty minutes away.”

  
Twelve PM kicks Jongin out of his house to explore crevices of reviving memories, to retrace a stranger’s past into his own present and hope he doesn’t find himself stuck in a similar future. Rain subsides to a low mist and sometimes sporadic raindrops onto his eyelashes. Still, he splays Kyungsoo’s book open on his palm and his other hand clinging onto the umbrella handle to protect the book. A ripped page from a random notebook he found in one of his boxes is tucked between pages of the book, a list of places from the book running down the paper. So far, _supermarket_ and _lake_ are crossed off.

He starts with the boulder watching over the lake, dismissing the thought of sitting on it when green moss is more visible than gray rock.  
____

Fog rolls into the vicinity during his sleep and trickles a gray blur that makes Jongin stand closer to Kyungsoo outside when he returns. It takes them ten minutes to walk from Jongin’s house to Kyungsoo’s, not straying too far from Kyungsoo under the opaque. Jongin figures that out when Kyungsoo invites him over.

Kyungsoo points at a clean-cut trail besides the lake, bare of grasses and twigs from mapped footsteps. “You just follow that. Since I go here often, I guess my feet made their own way to the lake.”

Kyungsoo’s house resides where the fog can’t reach, so strands of the nippy gray pools only at their feet. His house dwells on a rough edge of a neighboring mountain at the other side of the lake, trees on the verge of leaning over and collapsing onto the foliage from down below and a few boulders jutting into the distance. Overpassing tree branches above his house leave the grounds arid and not as green as the grass climbing onto Jongin’s doorsteps. More greens intertwine the white outside walls than below the brown doorsteps.

“It’s more of a cottage than a house, really,” Kyungsoo mumbles after Jongin mentions of what a cute house it is.

Heat robs him numb when he takes his first steps into Kyungsoo’s home, but he dismisses it and remembers that Kyungsoo hasn’t been home in four days and three nights. Rooms breach into other rooms, no walls to draw apart one partition of the grounds from another. Jongin finds himself lost under the staring bookshelves, thoughts muddled in _who has this many books in such a small space?_ , with short interchanges of lips slightly parting and teeth lining his lower lip.

A thin smile on Kyungsoo’s face carries on a challenge Jongin picks up on the second he fills some space in front of the tallest bookshelf, reaching all the way to the ceiling. Kyungsoo's thumb plays over a ripped cover of the book directly in front of his eyes before Jongin can step further inside.

  
Jongin doesn't remember it all, but somehow they’re sitting on Kyungsoo’s recliner. He has his forehead against the cotton junction of Kyungsoo's neck and shoulder as they both sink deeper into the armchair. The underside of his hand runs up and down over the skin of Jongin's cheek, from the sharp of his jawline to hard cheekbone and charcoal eye bags.

What Jongin does remember is the page-flipping through aged books--ones with jagged pages that jab his running fingers, wrinkling covers too broken and inevitably ripping beyond repair, stretching binds taped two, three, maybe four times over in clear Scotch, and lingering stains that splotch the pages in translucent yellows surrounded by even more yellows tens of shades darker. The rigid drag of Kyungsoo’s fingerprints over Jongin's wrists because he wants him to sit down beside him on the recliner, legs and arms destroying whatever set boundaries of strangers and friends, and _read this story since it looks the oldest and most broken out of any other books_ in Kyungsoo’s towering bookshelf.

Kyungsoo's cheek bathes in a coolness Jongin doesn't question when their skins meet again. “We should read the other book, the one I gave you.”

“Read it to me,” Jongin whispers.

“Have you read the note in the beginning?”

Jongin shakes his head into Kyungsoo’s shoulder. “I kind of skipped it and went straight to the first entry.”

He hears a quick push of breath out of Kyungsoo’s nose, an airy snort, “Everyone skips prologues. I’ll read that to you for now.

“ _Little Note:_

“ _Lightning shocks the sky and rain slowly creeps in not long after. I never realized how empty the bookshelves are until after you moved out. The moon would linger where it makes shadows into the shelves that looked a painful lot like your books and I wondered which books I could have finished if we stayed a little longer, if we became more than where we ended up. Books never looked quite the same to me. In fact, this is the first book I’ve technically read since you left._

“ _How long has it been? Almost a year, maybe._

“ _The woods whispered that they missed you, too. Sometimes I go out and pretend you’re there. Make up scenarios of could-have’s more than I-wonder-if’s. There are times where I go to the places where memories lingered but not the people I shared them with. The feelings of the past are more comforting than those of the present, almost depressingly so. It would be nice to go back in time, rob a few years from the present, but if we did, would we last longer or curtail off shorter? If you knew the end of our story, would you have tried to fix our situation or would you have ended it earlier?_ ” Kyungsoo whispers the last sentence slowly, as if he’s retracing the sadness from each word of it, as if he’s reliving every memory in his mind.

They sit in silence for a little longer than Jongin thought and his head rings in Kyungsoo’s voice reciting the last line. He puzzles over what really happened to the couple--why are they like this, how long were they together before this--but a different thought spills from Jongin’s mouth.

“What would you do if you were the man?” Jongin asks softly, sincerely.

Kyungsoo stops running his fingers up and down his cheek. “What do you mean?”

“The last line. If you were the man and you knew the ending of the story, would you fix or keep the ending?”

“I’d leave the ending.”

Jongin sulks into Kyungsoo’s hold in a heavy silence. Kyungsoo continues, anyway.

“ _I’ll be using this journal to think about the moments where I’d rather be with the memories than the person who lived those memories with me._

“ _If I somehow forget, I can at least watch them in my head. If somehow you find this journal, maybe you can relive the moments in your head. You can feel what I felt and see what I saw. Just like how the boulder next to the lake isn’t just where I sat and watched you catch fish. It’s where I read your favorite book and cried in the end and wondered if you, too, cried in the end. It’s where I wondered if the wrinkles on the page were due to dried tears and maybe I could revive them with my own, some mutual emotion shared at the same point of the story._

“ _I hope I can recall a lot._ ”  
____

There are times when Jongin finds his footsteps marking their way to Kyungsoo’s house a little earlier than usual. Sometimes, Jongin would boil extra water before Kyungsoo drops by. Other times, Jongin reads a little more than usual in case Kyungsoo asks him about the book.

Jongin doesn't think much of it, but he hopes Kyungsoo does.  
____

They’re on the roof of Kyungsoo’s cottage, staring up at the night. Stars step forward from behind the pollution and clouds and shine brighter across the black above. Jongin settles down with his arm folded under his head and Kyungsoo right beside him. He inhales deeply, cold and grass-saturated air without all of unsafe substances clean into his lungs.

Even under the same sky, looking at the same stars, sitting right under the same moon, if Jongin ever leaves, he would miss this the most. He wonders how some people manage to live their lives without a glimpse of unadulterated sky, without nasty puffs of gasoline and factory chemical gushes. Without a beeping besides their ears or a single worry poking their minds.

Jongin starts to feel sorry for those people.

“Did you get to the part of the book where she’s at the rooftop?”

Jongin shakes his head a little. “No, not yet.”

“Want me to read it to you?”

“Sure.”

“ _I went to the rooftop for the first time in a while. This time, I had to brush off the fallen leaves that managed to linger. The crickets are still chirping._

“ _Do you still look at the sky at night?_

“ _We’re looking at the same sky, wherever you are, but we have different views._ ”

He lifts an arm and starts tracing the brightest glass specks on the sky when Kyungsoo laughs quietly, almost like a whisper, “What are you doing?”

Jongin grins. “I don’t know.”

And he really doesn’t. He starts with the brightest stars on the left then continues his way to the right. He keeps doing it until he feels solid warmth resting into his side and looks over at Kyungsoo nestled there. He’s still sketching out the stars when he slips an arm around Kyungsoo’s shoulders. Jongin squeezes Kyungsoo closer when he rests his head on Jongin’s shoulder.

Kyungsoo whispers the last line carefully, “ _I can still find the stars you showed me. I still draw them out with my fingers like how you showed me._ ”  
____

Outside the window, Jongin’s eyes take in curves drawn on fogged glass before the carved moon and dark outlines of trees.  With some light, Jongin makes out the white rectangles scattering on the walls, linked together by string, but can’t read the notes written into whites. Polaroids hanging by thumbtacks strew over the walls of Kyungsoo’s bedroom, and Jongin uses up every second he can to step closer and scan the unknown faces, melting scenery, lingering memories under each white frame. Some have dates written on them in a despondent kind of handwriting, almost as if the person holding the pen hesitates with each word but writes with a pinpointed pressure anyhow.

An empty room, curtains wispy and caught trailing against air from an ajar door. _2013-04-19 Lonely home._

A wave of black hair and a glance of a white shoulder, perhaps part of a dress. _2013-04-28 Love is fleeting._

A silhouette looking out the window. He spots the same curtains in front of the bed. _2013-05-02 Sometimes solitude is a gift. If I give it to you, will you accept it?_

_2013-05-10 They say love is a waiting game. I think I lost track of time._

_2013-05-14 A time machine or a machine that stops time, which one is better?_

_2013-05-18 A time machine can fix your regrets._

_2013-05-20 But a machine that stops time holds them motionless even for a second._

_2013-05-29 I wish I had an extra second but I don’t deserve it._

Jongin feels obtrusive glancing at life-shots of Kyungsoo, let alone reading the messages on the Polaroids. To have Kyungsoo’s thoughts and memories set out on the walls like an exhibition makes Jongin feel like a lonesome, unwelcomed visitor. 

Jongin turns back to Kyungsoo, only to look away when he catches Kyungsoo’s eyes outlining his body, every contour, pigment, crease on the way down and back up.

“Oh-uh-sorry, it’s hard to...” Jongin chokes but Kyungsoo smiles and gestures him to sit down, a quiet pad of digits drumming over sheets. Jongin subsides on the bed next to him close enough to watch Kyungsoo’s eyelashes catch moonlight tumbling from the window.

A miserable smile works up Kyungsoo’s lips a millimeter at a time and Jongin thinks Kyungsoo is uncertain about smiling. A pathetic joke, perhaps. An agonizing mockery of what-should-have-been. Kyungsoo’s eyes flit down to his hand on the mattress besides Jongin but doesn’t reach further. “It’s okay. They’re a little depressing, though.”

“Who’s in your Polaroids?” Kyungsoo clasps his hands over his legs and drags a long sigh. When Kyungsoo’s lips fall flat, “She never came back did she?”

Kyungsoo shakes his head.

Jongin doesn’t say anything as his chest burns in an unforgiving regret.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the time machine quote is actually a [blonote](http://tablonotes.tumblr.com/post/98193434241/a-time-machine-vs-a-machine-that-stops-time-what)


	3. Chapter 3

Jongin leaves Kyungsoo's house earlier than usual that night.

He doesn't see Kyungsoo the next day. He wishes he can stop counting the hours, minutes since he has last seen Kyungsoo, but he sits down with a clock under his hands. He wishes that the minute and hour hands would finally be against him because time is winding down too slowly.

He starts to feel sorry for Kyungsoo for asking so many questions about the somebody on his wall who might be a somebody who's not in his life anymore. And no matter how much Kyungsoo wants to forget about that somebody, it might give him more reasons to remember.

He grabs an old notebook from the coffee table and figures that he should try writing an apology to ease his heart a little. His chest feels heavy, weighed down with the possibility that the next time he knocks on Kyungsoo's door, the door won't open. After a few minutes of sitting with a pen tapping in hand and notebook spirals imprinting into his thighs, he thinks that _I'm so sorry for asking too much I should have shut up I'll never mention it again_ isn't enough and tosses the notebook across the table.

He decides, in the end, to continue reading the book.

_The field was surrounded by a ring of towering trees and it's as if the sun knew exactly where to shine over because at one point, sunshine bled right through the branches and lingered in a perfect ray right across the dirt._

_It was the exact view of when we first discovered the little field. It was the only spot where the sun left little bright spots. In other areas of the forest, the sun was always blocked off by the trees. Your fingers held between mine and we walked around and absorbed the sunlight across the ground, the smell of dirt flitting in the air, and occasional string of buzzes from summer bugs._

_It felt really refreshing to wear a dress that twirled with my body and you wouldn't stop smiling whenever I let go of your hand to spin and let the dress swift up then back down._

_I wish all summers were like that._

_Despite the happy mood, you sang Forgotten Season. With our hands together, swinging up and down against the air._

_Despite promising that the song won't be our realities, we ended up living the lyrics._

Jongin kicks off the couch and throws his shoes on to look for the field.

Sometimes, he forgets to keep adding locations to visit on his list and attempt to read the book with the descriptions vivid and clear in his mind. He uses the jagged piece of paper as a bookmark to remind himself and as a method to impress Kyungsoo.

On the little list of places, he writes down _field in forest (perfect sunlight in summer)_. He underlines _summer_ twice because sunshine of high-noon spring is never the same as the two hours before sunset in midsummer. He'll have to keep this paper till then.

He wanders in a maze of trees reaching for the gray sky. The air is still cold and piercing in his nose and he regrets not wrapping his face under a scarf.

It takes multiple realizations that he's been walking to the same tree four times before starting some system to keep track. For every clutter of tree he passes by, he grabs a couple of sticks and a few stones to form an _X_ with the pile of stones weighing the sign down.

He makes at least five of those before he walks into a clearing with trees standing tall and looking down. He walks in a circle, in the borders of the field, and pictures a man and a woman in front of him.

The woman sways her hips side to side to let the hem of her dress flutter up and back down, fits of giggles from the two escaping deep and unknown into the trees. The man starts singing Forgotten Season with a questionable smile on his lips as he starts swinging their clasped hands together.

Perhaps the woman isn't smiling anymore.

Jongin doesn't know.

He heads back to his house when a raindrop splashes on his nose.

\----

Jongin doesn't see Kyungsoo the next day and the day after that.

There’s a biting chill that creeps into his house, no matter how long he keeps the heater running. He abandons his meals unfinished, leftovers piling in the fridge. Sleep doesn't greet him warmly anymore. Instead, sleep leaves him at the door knocking. Sleep doesn't even bother leaving a welcome mat.

He sits at his window with his chin dipping into his palm while he wonders what Kyungsoo might be doing with all of the pictures on the wall. Jongin thinks that Kyungsoo might still have them because he still loves her.

The thought pounds his head and punches his guts.

Clouds start to spit down hard and gray and Jongin thinks the weather might be hinting him that he's right.  
\----

A week later, his fridge and cupboards are emptied of food during the days he doesn't see Kyungsoo, so Jongin bundles in a few layers and swings the umbrella handle from his finger.

He pulls his hood up as he opens the door to leave for the supermarket when he almost steps on another pair of shoes on his welcome mat, the even surface of bristles reminding him of how little anyone has stepped on it or even entered his door.

He looks up and watches Kyungsoo slowly lift his head.

"I'm sorry for asking about the pictures," Jongin sighs.

"It's okay," Kyungsoo whispers with a nod.

"I won't ask about them again."

"You probably won't. I trust you."

Jongin grips onto the umbrella handle tight under his palm. "I should've stopped, but I didn't."

"I took them down."  
____

Kyungsoo asks if Jongin wants to come over the next afternoon and Jongin is more than happy to accept. He even slips tea bags into his jacket, though Kyungsoo's cupboards probably have enough tea already.

They meet halfway, right at the bank of the lake, though Kyungsoo said to just knock on his door. Jongin greets Kyungsoo with a smile, but Kyungsoo doesn't return it. He doesn't think much of it--after almost two weeks of not talking to each other, Jongin was expecting it. He isn’t expecting much, either. He just didn't think it would strike his heart heavy and low.

The walk to Kyungsoo's house is restrained until he speaks up, "How far are you in the book?"

"I'm at the part where she finds the field in the forest."

Jongin hopes for more than the nod that Kyungsoo offers, but nothing comes.

They're sitting at Kyungsoo's living room when he faintly offers to read the next part, yellow light opening up to the white walls.

Jongin sips from his mug of tea. He wants to take the seat next to Kyungsoo on the recliner, but he thinks that Kyungsoo might need some space. For now, Jongin sinks deeper into the wooden hair across the room. 

_Why are tears perceived as a sign of weakness when they often fall in times of pain, struggle, regret?_

_I never understood why._

_A woman at the supermarket called me crazy. I guess she knows I’m still waiting for you. The person who caused the pain does not receive the scolding, but the person who receives the pain does._

_Why?_

"I feel so bad for the woman," is all Jongin can say when silence presses down.

After a moment, Kyungsoo sighs, "I know. I do, too."

"It's like no one understands her."

And they all believe that it's her fault for still loving the man. He doesn't understand why no one blames the man for hurting and leaving her. He wants to ask if the man ever reconciles with her, if they ever start rebuilding from their first ending, when another thought probes his mind. 

"Hey, Kyungsoo, don't you think the book is oddly similar to this place?"

Kyungsoo's lips purse as his eyes wander in thought. "I guess it has some similarities. I never really thought of that before."

"Does the man ever come back?" Jongin finally asks. His voice is low, as if ashamed to even ask the question.

Kyungsoo shrugs, finger running around the rim of his mug at his lap. "You have to read the book."

"I feel like it's so easy to picture everything in the book, since it's so similar to this area. Maybe I can find the woman at the market place who called her crazy. Or maybe I can find the woman and protect her from the man and the pain."

Kyungsoo simply nods and Jongin wishes he kept his mouth sealed shut.

A quiet settles between them and Jongin takes this chance to apologize again.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: close to smut? :DD

Darkness encapsulates Kyungsoo’s bedroom, partitioning blue curtains giving way to some moonlight on its way to the adjacent wall. Jongin stands away from the bed, where Kyungsoo breathes deeply and slowly.

Kyungsoo taps his digits over the mattress besides him, just like the last time. Except Kyungsoo won’t look at Jongin, and Jongin is okay with that.

He ponders how long it might take before Kyungsoo and Jongin can fall back in their old routines, but Jongin worries that they can never go back to before.

Jongin’s mind freezes and an onslaught of words fray his brain from coherent thoughts, body stuck at a standstill when Kyungsoo leans forward more than usual, breaking every boundary Jongin thought wouldn’t even shudder at a punch, and presses his lips against Jongin’s. A couple of seconds pass by when Kyungsoo pulls back and stares wide-eyed, mouth ready to form apologies and a hand resting on Jongin’s shoulder, until Jongin stops the words from spilling with his own lips and he believes that things can go back to before, perhaps even better.

Misangled bumps as Kyungsoo’s mouth starts working against Jongin’s, his fingertips press lightly on Jongin’s chest and pushes him down, lower, lower, until he’s lying flat on the bed. Hesitation quickens with certainty when Jongin slowly pulls a fistful of Kyungsoo’s shirt higher and maybe Kyungsoo felt the same way when he slips a hand under Jongin’s shirt and lets his fingers walk up his abdomen in a lethargic affliction.

A mess of kisses, _Kyungsoo_ , spent exhales, _Jongin please_ , and somehow their shirts fall somewhere on the floor and Jongin is the one pressing Kyungsoo down this time.

Jongin drags his hands from Kyungsoo’s chest, skitters down his collarbones and up his neck to hold Kyungsoo’s face between his palms. He leans his head down lower as his thumbs run through Kyungsoo’s cheeks, lips barely touching. Jongin smiles over Kyungsoo’s lips because in that moment, he holds onto the possibility that things will be okay.

He removes his hands from Kyungsoo’s face, a low, raspy whimper to continue evading Kyungsoo’s mouth. He leaves kisses down Kyungsoo’s collarbone, lets his lips chase for more up Kyungsoo’s neck, across his jaw, and stop. Kyungsoo’s breaths brush past Jongin’s ear all heated and quick as he slides a warm hand up the back of Jongin’s neck and into dark strands. He tugs lightly, enough for Jongin to look up into half-lidded eyes. Kyungsoo’s head falls back the same time a moan beats from his lips and into the curve of Jongin’s ear just when Jongin’s hand slides past his bare hips and under the hem of Kyungsoo’s pants.

____

Night trails him down, a dark follower carving every motion he makes onto cracks of asphalt or glued seams of tiled floors or bumps on painted walls. It’s not until he runs into the streets that grime on bricks of caving alleys sticks deep into the creases of his palms. A single question repeats lucid, not even hindering between splashes of puddles and rustles of blown newspaper pages, as he blindly guides his way through. There’s a breathlessness in the words but the question stays in a persistent repetition.

_Are you following me?_

Jongin breaks away and wakes up to his throat itchy and sore, perspiration on the verge of falling into the pillows, and Kyungsoo’s hands around his wrists. At every second beat, his heart pounds too deeply, slowly into his chest. Swallowing dries his throat and sitting up burns his lower back. Nighttime still shuts down the sky whole and warm light from the lamps on Kyungsoo’s bedsides try to take over the nighttime darkness.

Kyungsoo leaves his side and Jongin almost whimpers for Kyungsoo to come back until he returns with a glass of water on the nightstand. His hands slide up Jongin’s cheeks, thumbs wiping at forming droplets at the corners of his eyes. He pushes Jongin to sit up and drink water.

“Sorry,” Jongin whispers after emptying the glass.

Kyungsoo smiles, pressing the back of his hand onto Jongin’s forehead. “No, nothing to be sorry about. You should change your shirt, though. You sweated right through it.”

Kyungsoo stands up and comes back with a folded white shirt on his open palms. Jongin changes his shirt with Kyungsoo’s back towards him and arms crossed.

“I don’t want to see you shirtless.” Kyungsoo sits up next to Jongin on the bed when the soaked shirt is thrown in the hamper, legs crossed and knee grazing Jongin’s hip. “Nightmare?”

“Did I wake you up?”

“You were screaming and it was hard to fall asleep after.”

At that, Jongin wants to run back home and never talk to Kyungsoo again because o _h my, fuck-I screamed in my sleep and Kyungsoo is the only one who heard it._ Instead, he throws the blanket over his body and curls into a ball, hoping to wake up and Kyungsoo might think the screaming was actually a dream, something distracting his mind from reality.

But Kyungsoo pulls the blankets away to slide under them with Jongin, giggling at the shyness and taking Jongin’s face in his hands and brushing a kiss on his lips. “It’s okay, I get bad dreams, too.” Kyungsoo kisses him one more time and Jongin sinks languid against his lips.

A quietude overlays the two, just a play of Jongin’s grin dying flat before Kyungsoo pokes his stomach to revive a smile and coax a laugh.

Laughter is contagious; Jongin learns that as he watches Kyungsoo giggle his way off the bed and out of sight.

Jongin learns another thing: Kyungsoo likes to sing.

It’s almost four in the morning, Kyungsoo’s fingertips chide a beat onto a package of meat in his hands to follow the melody slipping effortlessly from his lips, and Jongin asks him if singing is an aspiration of his, why isn’t he pursuing it.

Kyungsoo shrugs as he unwraps the meat at the counter as Jongin sits at the dinner table. “I want to be away from people, not have attention towards me.”

His lips are about to ask why Kyungsoo is cooking so early in the morning, but it drops away from his palate.  
____

Mere daylight escapes into Jongin’s living room when he drops himself on the couch with the book in his hand. His feet dangle from the side of the armrest as he rubs them together to gather some warmth.

Kyungsoo hums a slow, playful tune from the kitchen in between metal slides of utensils and numerous clicks of the gas stove to start.

_I heard the song for the first time in a while._

_Maybe this season will be forgotten as a painful memory._

Jongin’s foot taps along to whatever song Kyungsoo knocks from closed lips the second Jongin remembers what he was supposed to ask him.

“Hey, Kyungsoo,” Jongin calls as he closes the book flat on his chest.

“Hmm?” Kyungsoo chimes between the tapping of a knife edge on the cutting board.

“How does ‘Forgotten Season’ go?”

The cutting stops and Jongin hears wood drop against wood. “You’ve never heard of the song before?”

“No, I haven’t.”

  
Thunder applauds the night as Jongin pulls Kyungsoo close to him under the blankets. His digits easily slip into Kyungsoo’s between their rising chests. He listens to Kyungsoo’s voice spelling out the song for him, a longing in the soft notes that Jongin hopes he will never have.

As Kyungsoo sings, Jongin brushes off loose hair strands and finds the moon refracting from his eyes more vibrant than usual. Jongin’s eyes fall from Kyungsoo’s eyes to his lips fabricating a secret of an old story to the pale curves of his cheeks. 

Branches tap against the windows, as if wanting to break the glass so that they can proffer the story of the woman who dreamt but dreamt too much and the man who stopped dreaming at some indefinable goodbye.  
____

_I’m sure I saw you at the edge between the highway and woods. What are you doing there? I’ll go check on it tomorrow. The thunder hurts my ears and I don’t want to miss a sound from you._

_Please don’t leave this time. I have so much to ask you._

He turns the next page and instead of the fluttering streaks of dark red ink, angry black marks saunter the page. He wonders how he missed these pages, such a blaring contrast between the previous ones, when he remembers that he even skipped the prologue when he first started.

He flips to the next page and the one after that and decides to save the rest of the book for tomorrow. Perhaps something will happen in the book and hopefully he can talk to Kyungsoo about it right away under low lights and never-ending chatter.

For now, he closes the book.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some more warnings: mention of slight a little self harm, disturbing images??

Jongin wakes up to an intrusive light against his eyelids and he groans into his pillow. He peels an eye open to find that it is only seven in the morning, too early for him to be awake. 

He should just pull the blankets over his head and try to float back to sleep, but he grabs the book from his nightstand and heads outside after slipping his shoes on because daybreak is impossible to escape. He sits on the stairs at his front door and flips to the page he last tucked his bookmark in, right at the beginning of angry black words.

_She walked down the trail and to to the edge of the empty highway, sighing at the view of the monochromatic smears on the sky._

The sky never changes here _, she thought._

Jongin makes his way through the forest and to the expanse towards the highway. He hopes that the same gray view can be similar to the one that the woman sighed at and after a few more visits to this particular area, he can sigh with her.

_She hurried over to a tree at the very edge and started climbing up to catch a glimpse of the scenery down below from up above._

As he reads, he pictures Kyungsoo as the woman, climbing up the tree to catch a better view of the town thousands of feet under. He thinks Kyungsoo would be the type to climb trees if he stops worrying about slipping off, scratching marks, deepening bruises. His mind wanders and pictures Kyungsoo falling off the tree, watching the ground getting closer and closer but not close enough. Because when he gets too close, everything will go black silence and dissipate into nothing.

He wants to slap himself and stab his mind for thinking of such a thought and decides that if Kyungsoo falls off a tree, he’ll stand back up because _he’s Kyungsoo; he can go through anything._

He’s about to dig his nails into the skin of his neck when he blinks hard, flinching at a sudden crack shocking through the rustles of leaves and tall grasses, and finds a familiar body lying on its stomach across the concrete. Jongin isn’t able to catch a single centimeter of movement jerking the body alive from the edge of the grass where his knees give way.

He stumbles towards Kyungsoo’s side, fingers losing grip on the book and tears already blurring the unmoving body from his view. His legs burn after very few steps towards Kyungsoo and he kneels besides the body. His hands tremble as they try to reach for Kyungsoo's face, still soft despite jagged pebbles under his skin.

 _He's Kyungsoo; he can go through anything_ , he tells himself through shuddering inhales and collapsing exhales, under tears beating streaks down his face, with his fingertips inching closer to Kyungsoo's eyes to close from their empty gazes but never touching.

There’s a fracture running behind his hairline but no blood seeping through.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some more warnings: disturbing images ??, blood...yeah

Daylight spills between his curtains and children scream a few stories from his small apartment as he gets up from his bed to close the window. He’s about to unhinge the lock on his window when a knock on the door echoes into his room. He flattens down his hair as he makes his way to the front door, mumbling about how it’s too early to have visitors and besides, who wants to visit him? He catches his clock on the wall staring a _09:12_ back at him.

“Still too early,” he whispers to himself.

“Hi,” the officer wheezes once Jongin opens the door. After Jongin greets a silent hello, “It took a while to figure out where we can meet you. We found this while we were investigating, and we believe this is yours.”

The leather slides across his palms like the first time. Before he can think about returning the book to the police officer, waving a _no, sir, this doesn't belong to me_ , his front door is empty and so is the hallway.

He shuts the door and sits at the couch, too awake to fall back asleep.

He doesn’t think much about the book back in his hands, not because it’s too early to think. What he remembers is not finishing the book, so he sticks his finger at the bookmarked page, all sophisticated red marching across the page overturned by black letters, and starts to finish.

_She walked down the trail and to to the edge of the empty highway, sighing at the view of the monochromatic smears at the sky._

The sky never changes here _, she thought._

_She hurried over to a tree at the very edge and started climbing up to catch a glimpse of the scenery down below from up above. Despite climbing up the tree to view the same shade of gray everyday, the scenery continued to leave her sitting back against the branches for a while and sketching out the details of today’s sky with her eyes._

_A rustle from the lone tree down the highway made her lose her thoughts of the sky._

_She glanced down, wondering who else would be looking at what she’s looking at, because she has never seen anyone want to absorb the sad clouds and desolate trees before._

_She caught a hint of the shaking branches and a tease of dark hair over familiar brown eyes._

_“Come up with me,” she whispered._

_After he climbed up the neighboring tree and settled at a branch, she took his hand from across empty space, tangling her digits tight around his own in hopes that he will not leave and they change their ending._

_In between strokes up and down his thumb, she tightened her grip and pulled him a little closer and closer to her and pushed herself closer and closer to him. Until it was too close and everything rang a black silence and nothing more._

His breath is caught in his throat when his fingers grip on the book a little too hard, his eyes peeking at the words on the next page.

He flips to the next page, anyway, to the angry black words.

 

_There’s a legend inscribed in the mountains, bleached into reality through the fog, of a fallen soul looking for redemption after resisting to comprehend and comply with Death. When forgiveness became unreachable, the soul brought others with it, coercing even the innocent, unadulterated lives off a cliff and down the same road. It is mentioned many times, passed down the generations through hushed whispers of fear, that those who meet the soul cannot distinguish heaven from hell, lucid dreams and fantasies from the cynical, corrupted world. Not a single person can be protected from the soul._

_No one knows how the soul looks like because no one met the soul in the mountains and left with blood still coursing up their veins and air still filling their lungs._

_Grandmothers would warn their grandchildren of the fog on the mountains and how it is worse when rain and thunder inevitably looms by; the rain makes it worse: once you lose your vision of the real world, there is no way of coming back. Grandfathers would find ways to prevent even the damnest soul from thinking about gracing even a fingertip over the mountain’s borders._

When he drops the book on the hardwood, the book opens up to the very last page, right before the back cover. From the chair, he catches a small drawing at the bottom corner of the view of an arm caught writing with a fountain pen in hand, perhaps the most normal thing on the book.

He squints and finds that bandages scatter across the arm, clustering at the back of the elbow, maybe over a vein or two.


End file.
